WotC Seeks Unity with a New Edition

enrious · Jan 12, 2012

Spinachcat said:
It's not debatable.

And you have the empirical evidence that proves beyond all doubt that a VTT is absolutely required for a successful 4e/5e?

Great, please provide it, otherwise you're merely providing an opinion and guess what? That is debatable.

Also, there are no VTTs with any kind of marketing or advertising so they essentially don't exist in the marketplace. The 4e PHB promised us a VTT and 4e failed because WotC did not deliver it.

Post hoc fallacy.

TrippyHippy · Jan 12, 2012

Spinachcat said:
It's not debatable. We live in an era of digital gaming. People expect to be able to play their favorite game 24/7 from home. If you can't give them that experience, your game will just be yet another dead tree product in the tiny, shrinking niche of TTRPGs. The money is in the digital realm.

Also, there are no VTTs with any kind of marketing or advertising so they essentially don't exist in the marketplace. The 4e PHB promised us a VTT and 4e failed because WotC did not deliver it.

It's arguable that WotC hesitated in releasing the VTT because of the reception the tabletop game recieved, and made them think twice about investing in a system that they couldn't persude a bulk of their target market to buy into.

It seems a moot point to refer to recent comments by the new D&D development team that they are committed to a face-to-face tabletop gaming experience, which somewhat refutes your claims a bit. Beyond this, there is no actual evidence that VTT are necessarily direct competitors to tabletop gaming, any more than gamers prefering to spend their money at McDonalds instead. A gamer who wants access 24/7 to a VTT, might also want a weekly Tabletop gaming session for a different experience.

talok55 · Jan 12, 2012

Return 4th Edition to the OGL. Release a true SRD for it. And give up on the absolute jackassery of trying to repeal the OGL. Because it was those actions that caused the core fanbase to believe the company gave them a big middle finger.

The GSL was a big middle finger to the gaming community, but it was only one of many things WotC did to cheese off their customers. It does seem like they really were actively trying to "fire the audience" with 4E. The problem is that they fired a lot of their audience and the MMO crowd they were trying to appeal to did not rush in to fill the void. I suspect most of them still don't even know what D&D is and if they do, they don't have any interest in playing a table top game when they could be playing their MMO. This shows just how out of touch WotC has grown with their fan base. Now, it at least seems they are learning from these mistakes. Let's hope it's not too late to save the D&D brand.

They do need a new edition. 4E failed because a lot of D&D players don't like the mechanics and fluff, and some are just ticked off at the company, itself. I don't know if they can do much about gamers actively disliking the company, but to win back the people that don't like the game, they have to make a game that is distinctly not 4E. Making a basic 4E will not win back any customers, it will only waste money and show just how clueless they are about their customers. Besides, they basically tried that with Essentials. It was poorly received and failed to revive the brand. A new edition may not save the brand, but it is the only option they have right now.

qstor · Jan 12, 2012

I'm happy with Pathfinder but I signed up for the playtest. If there's defenses, powers and healing surges though count me out.

Mike

qstor · Jan 12, 2012

Spinachcat said:
It's not debatable. We live in an era of digital gaming. People expect to be able to play their favorite game 24/7 from home. If you can't give them that experience, your game will just be yet another dead tree product in the tiny, shrinking niche of TTRPGs. The money is in the digital realm.

I think that was a lot of the backlash though the feeling that 4e was just an computer MMO. If they move towards 1st edition. There won't be that easy use on a computer.

Mike

mudbunny · Jan 12, 2012

TrippyHippy said:
It's arguable that WotC hesitated in releasing the VTT because of the reception the tabletop game recieved, and made them think twice about investing in a system that they couldn't persude a bulk of their target market to buy into.

The VT wasn't released because it wasn't ready. The 3PP that they originally contracted out to work on it didn't get it done in time, and it took time for them to attempt to program it themselves (I assume), realize that they couldn't, and license out a different program for the VT that is currently in open beta for DDI subscribers.

pauljathome · Jan 12, 2012

Spinachcat said:
It's not debatable.

I just had to point out the irony of somebody declaring, in a debate, that the topic being debated isn't debatable.

More importantly, the GSL is a non-issue and was proven a non-issue when PDF publishers cranked out 4e stuff without the GSL.

This is very demonstrably false. Several previous publishers of OGL material publicly stated that the GSL was the reason that they weren't supporting 4th ed.

What is acceptable to a small garage company (into which category most pdf publishers fall) is NOT necessarily acceptable to a somewhat larger company with full time employees

enrious · Jan 12, 2012

People (like Kenzer) can publish 4e stuff under Fair Use copyright laws and bet that they have top-notch lawyers (I believe David Kenzer is a lawyer) and reasonably believe they can publish compatible material without violating those laws and thus subjecting themselves to costly and lengthy litigation.

Or people could publish under the OGL/GSL and if they stayed within the provisions of the respective licenses, find themselves in a safe-harbor, where WotC agreed not to sue them.

So yes and no - companies could publish 4e under Fair Use and thus not need the GSL - but if they deemed the effort and possible risk to not be worth it, they wouldn't.

And with the GSL being so horrible when it came out (and still not very good after the revision), it makes sense that companies elected not to.

It's an odd situation - the OGL isn't theoretically required to publish and yet for a most companies, it is required.

Mallus · Jan 12, 2012

Spinachcat said:
It's not debatable. We live in an era of digital gaming. People expect to be able to play their favorite game 24/7 from home.

The debatable part is: is D&D that kind of game?

For instance, a virtual tabletop wouldn't help my group much, if at all. It can't manufacture extra time to play our campaign, and the ability to 'drop in' on other persistent campaigns, a la a MMORPG, isn't important. We want to play our campaign.

bhandelman · Jan 12, 2012

Spinachcat said:
It's not debatable. We live in an era of digital gaming. People expect to be able to play their favorite game 24/7 from home.

It is debatable because there is no evidence for anything you are saying, just conjecture. Yes, it is a digital era, so it could be argued things like PDFs should be a given, but a VTT? None of the major TRPGs have a VTT. Pathfinder is doing just fine, Call of Cthulhu seems to have grown in the last couple of years, and Warhammer FRP seems to be seeing a resurgence recently. None of those products has a VTT, and it isn't even something you see discussed often. Most of the time when you see VTTs being discussed, a solid majority of the posts are either indifferent or negative.

Here is another example against your argument: board games. Monopoly has had plenty of digital editions. yet do you know anyone that plays them? People play Monopoly as a group, they don't like the idea of playing online very much. Look at something like chess that seems to be doing fine online with many popular sites, most chess players still only play over a board, and the ones that do play online mostly play blitz because they don't want to be stuck in front of the computer for 4 hours. This is the closest example I can find, and it leads me to believe VTTs will never be a dominant elemant for TRPGs.